Space Crusade V’s SpaceHulk

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Billiam Babble wrote

In the early Space Crusade games, were the scenarios/missions more like Heroquest, i.e. mapped rooms with pre-planned encounters controlled by a GM?

This is kinda an odd one to answer since the answer is both yes and no … I’ll try and explain…

First of all despite Space Crusade often being described as a Sci-fi version of HeroQuest, the 2 games play very differently.  

The missions in the Space Crusade Mission Book consisted of point collecting missions with objectives like “Kill X number of creature Y” or “Find and destroy the Chaos Dreadnought” each kill/objective being worth a certain number of points. At the end of the game players add up the points they’ve collected, deduct points for casualties and then look it up on chart which tells you how much of a failure to the Empire you are.
Maps were provided of how to layout the board pieces, but the encounters were not ‘pre-mapped’. In Space Crusade encounters are placed at random by the GM scattering ‘Blip Tokens’ face down onto the board, the blips are then turned over in game when a player’s model draws line of sight to them and the model the blip represents is placed on the board. This means that the objective creatures for your mission could turn up anywhere – even in the first room you encounter on the other side of your airlock (I remember one such game were my marines where slaughtered out right after finding a dreadnought in the 2nd room I came to!). Because of this method of placing the encounters, the maps provided in the book made very little difference to the way the missions played (in fact you can play almost any mission on any map).  


 ^ A typical map from the Space Crusade Mission book

Although Space Hulk uses a similar ‘blip based’ mechanic to Space Crusade, SC does not play tactically like SH. This is for a number of reasons, which I’ll try to explain briefly here…
The blips in SC are pre-placed and never moved by the GM apart from if indicated by an event card. Where as in SH the Genestealer player gets to move the blips along corridor, ect and attempt to out manoeuvre the Space Marines. Because of this SC plays kinda like an old computer game with the monsters standing round waiting for the player to arrive.

++Authors Note++
A Since writing this it was pointed out to me by Mezillious that The Space Crusade rule book states on pg15 that the GM may move each blip token up to 5 spaces on each turn. Thus I retract the contrary statements in the above paragraph

Another difference is that blips in SH can represent a group of Genestealers, where as in SC 1 blip = 1 creature. Both games do however include blank/bogus/false reading blips, meaning players can spend turn after turn arranging their marines tactically for a close encounter, only to find an empty corridor.
Also it’s worth noting that the GM in SC (unlike the Tyranid player in SH) doesn’t know what’s on the other side of the blips until the players encounter them. My point here is that in Space Crusade the GM (or Alien Player as the rulebook has it) doesn’t so much control the game as facilitate it. In fact by borrowing a few rules from something like Chainsaw Warrior or the solo-rules from AHQ it is possible to play SC without a GM.  




^ A few Pictures taken on my Birthday (2009) of Me, Big Cat, Mark and Bill playing Space Crusade using board sections from Mark’s 3rd edition SpaceHulk. The Dark Angels, Blood Angels and the Chaos Marine champion were lent to us for the evening by Bill’s Friend Dave, an excellent painter and hobbyist who we are hoping to see joining us here on the forums soon. The Ultramarines were painted by Mark and the unpainted(!) Space Crusade figures are mine.

[Billiam Babble]

Excellent!  Thanks for drawing up comparisons - it really helps me to piece to together a gap in gaming history!

I printed this post to sneak a read at work, but it never left my bag - d'oh, busy day I guess.

The blips in SC remind me of the "freeze-frame" style dungeons (and HQ).  Sounds like there were more adversaries but the management of the quests sounds clumsy.  (At least the Quest room in WHQ is shuffled into the second half of the pack - but I mustn't digress into WHQ and solo dungeoning. ;) )

Was there was plenty of potential for a variety of scenarios?

Did SC play quickly? - i.e. how complicated were the dice mechanics?

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Billiam Babble wrote

The blips in SC remind me of the "freeze-frame" style dungeons (and HQ).  

The difference between Space Crusade's blip system and your more traditional 'freeze frame' dungeon is that SC's blips are placed entirely randomly, where as in a 'freeze frame' type dungeon such as HeroQuest the encounters are at least pre-planned. Also having the blips on the board means players have a pretty accurate idea where a creature (but not what creature) will appear, where as in HQ and other such games the players have no idea what's in a room until they open the door. I think an important distinction between Sci-Fi and Fantasy games is to have rules which represent the technology and give the game a sci-fi feel - SC's blips (such as they are) do that job.

Although the 2 games are very different, comparisons between Space Crusade and HeroQuest are bound the be made since Space Crusade and HeroQuest (along with their lesser known sibling Battlemaster) were produced in conjunction with MB Games as 'Introductory Games' (better known to players like us as 'Gateway-drugs').

Another major difference from HeroQuest is that Space Crusade (like most Sci-fi games) is more of a strategy game than a role-play game, with each player controlling a team of marines rather than a single character (Essentially each player has their own party of adventurers) It's also worth mention here that SpaceHulk is primarily a 2 player game while Space Crusade is designed for 3 players and a GM.

Billiam Babble wrote

Was there was plenty of potential for a variety of scenarios?

yea I think the Space Crusade system has potential for better and more in-depth quests (or should I be saying 'Missions' since it's a Sci-fi game). I was a little unfair in my last post when describing SC's missions, while most of them are based around the “Kill X number of creature Y” there are some missions in Space Crusade (and a few more in the Eldar Attack and Mission Dreadnought expansions) that have different kinds of objectives. Some missions require players to reach a particular room or pre-placed marker and the Eldar Attack expansion also contains a few blips marked 'Equipment' which need to be retrieved in some of the missions from that expansion.
It's pretty easy to expand on and improve the SC missions by simply adding more interesting objectives, also using the much more versatile SpaceHulk tiles (any edition) gives you a bigger variety of layouts, which helps. A few examples of home-brew missions we've played in my group include: running around closing a bunch of hatches on a turn limit, recovering fuel containers and carrying them back to your airlock, escaping a ship as it self destructs and just once or twice an all-out player vs player deathmatch!

Billiam Babble wrote

 Sounds like there were more adversaries but the management of the quests sounds clumsy.  

SpaceHulk is (more or less) always a game of SpaceMarines vs Genestealers, in Space Crusade the player will find them self fighting an unlikey mixture of Chaos Spacemarines, Orks, Gretchin and Androids (Necrons) with the occasional Genestealer leaping out of a hole in the cleaning and ruining your carefully planned strategies. Even the players aren't restricted to just being SpaceMarines, the Eldar Attack expansion gave players the option to play as a team of Eldar Guardians and WD134 provided rules for taking a gang of Ork Looters.
If you don't like the random mish-mash of enemies SC provides you can 'theme' your SC missions by only using particular types of blips, for instance use only Ork and Gretchin blips in a game to represent a craft occupied by an Orkiod army. Of course making your own set of blips catered toward your own model collection help here too – a gamer own owns a Necron or Tyranid army could make their own set of blips for a mission set in a Tomb Complex or a Hive-Nest respectively. You can expand on the theme further by making mission specific Event Cards to shuffle into the deck, like parasite attacks  in a Tyranid Nest or de-pressurising sections for missions set on a derelict starship. Watching any Sci-fi show (yes - even Voyager) should give you plenty of ideas for scenarios.

Billiam Babble wrote

Did SC play quickly? - i.e. how complicated were the dice mechanics?

Like HeroQuest, Space Crusade uses a quick and simple dice mechanic for combat. Space Crusade uses 2 types of specialised D6s both marked with worryingly low numbers. (you may have noticed a few of these dice scattered round the table in my pictures of SC games)


 ^ The White Dice are marked with 4 '0's, a '1' and a '2'  and the Red Dice are Marked with a '1', a '2', a '3' and 3 '0's. Effectively they give the same results as D6-4 and D6-3  respectively (ignoring negatives). These are inconsistently referred to in the rules at Light Weapons Dice (White) and Heavy Weapons Dice (Red).

Combat is fast and works as follows: Dice are rolled for the attacker's weapon and then compared to the target's fixed Armour value. If the total is higher than the target's armour value then a hit is scored, the target then looses 1 Wound for each point rolled over it's Armour value (Rolling equal to a target's Armour value hits but does not wound). All the basic enemy creatures in SC have 1 Wound so they die in one successful shot, but getting that shot often proves difficult.
As you might imagine, at times combat can feel rather ineffective with a high number of 0's being rolled each turn, of cries of “Are their ANY numbers on these dice?” can often be heard across a SC table, but the probability of hitting and killing an enemy is about the same as (if not slightly higher than) in a modern game of 40k.
The SC rules feel almost too simple in places, most Basic Weapons roll 2 White Dice and most Heavy Weapons roll 2 Red Dice with varied areas of effect.

Close Combat in SC is handled a little differently to shooting, with both sides rolling dice determined by their Close Combat value against each other with the highest score winning and then the loser deducting wounds in the same way as shooting.

[Billiam Babble]

This comparison between the two games is of article standard, and is very much appreciated!  Excellent photo illustrations also.  I'm very fond of the idea of blips and encounter cards (or cards which effect a tactics of a situation) and, like you say, the scanned life-form blips is a key difference between a fantasy dungeon and an Aliens style encounter.  

(These are the sorts of thorough descriptions I need before teleporting to Ebay and bidding a couple of organs for a box of cut-up card and plastic minis...)

[Mezillious]

Hi guys, I realise that this post is quite old, however having just gotten back into Space Crusade with some friends I feel I need to come to it's defense.

"The blips in SC are pre-placed and never moved by the GM apart from if indicated by an event card." - The Space Crusade rule book states that the alien player may move each blip token up to 5 spaces on each turn, meaning that the aliens are very much a dynamic threat, being able to close in on heavy weapon marines.

The rule book also does not state that the alien player must not know the identity of the blips, I always assumed that the alien player knew what the blips were and placed them strategically.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Welcome to The Lost and the Damned, be sure to post on the Introductions Page and let us know a little about yourself

Mezillious wrote

The Space Crusade rule book states that the alien player may move each blip token up to 5 spaces on each turn, meaning that the aliens are very much a dynamic threat, being able to close in on heavy weapon marines.

Opp, my mistake! I seem to have missed that rule  ah! I see pg15!

Mezillious wrote

The rule book also does not state that the alien player must not know the identity of the blips, I always assumed that the alien player knew what the blips were and placed them strategically.

Conversely I've always assumed the opposite (that they are placed randomly) as their are no rules or guide lines for strategies or where to put particular kinds of blips to stop the Alien Player putting all the powerful stuff near a Marine's entry point and trapping them, preventing them from completing their objectives.

Don't get me wrong, I love SpaceCrusade, I just see room for expansion and improvement  

[Mezillious]

MortiS-the-Lost wrote

Don't get me wrong, I love SpaceCrusade, I just see room for expansion and improvement  

Ah improvement! I have been running a weekly game with a few of my friends and haven't managed to get more than 3 people at the same time to play. We have been playing through the SC missions and alternating the alien player so everyone gets a turn. The problem we now face is that for this week's game I have up to 5 people that are keen so it's possible me might have too many!

Here's my solution to the problem, let me know if you see any problems with it or if you think I can add/change anything:

Once all marine players are present, if there is an extra player the Chaos marines are taken out of the arsenal of the Alien player and used as a Chaos Marine team. (I bought a few extra marines and weapons on ebay so i have enough weapons to give the chaos marines the full assortment of weapons). In the same way that the marine players are not necessarily on the same team, but are working towards a common goal, so to are the chaos marines and the alien player.

The chaos player plays directly after the alien player and the chaos marines are initially placed anywhere on the board as long as they are within 5 squares of the alien's reinforcement squares. The chaos player does not score points, as the marines' condition (i.e being a chaos marine) is considered temporary (for a single game). All points for marines killed are awarded to the alien player and tabulated in the regular way.

The chaos player's rank is not affected by anything that happens while playing as a chaos marine because - if the alien player draws his/her last event card, before the marine players have their final turn to return to their docking claws, the chaos player moves and fires all of his remaining chaos marines, before they each detonate an explosive charge, which initiates a missile launcher attack on each square occupied by a chaos marine or commander (or possible a suicide android style attack where both heavy weapons dice are used on adjacent squares).

I have made some new cards for the chaos marines which I think will allow them to become not only a credible threat to the space marine teams, but almost a priority. There are 4 order cards and 8 equipmement cards - the chaos player uses their current rank in the campaign to determine how many cards they should take.

1. ORDER - MOVE IT! - Same as MOVE IT! order card
2. ORDER - FIRE! - Same as FIRE! order card
3. ORDER BEZERK! - Same as BY SECTIONS order card (all chaos marines may move OR fire twice)
4. ORDER PHOTON GRENADES - Same as PHOTON GRENADES - Blood Angels

1. EQUIP BOLT PISTOLS - Same as BOLT PISTOLS
2. EQUIP TARGETER - Same as TARGETER
3. EQUIP TARGETER - Same as TARGETER
4. EQUIP SCOPE - Allows all chaos marines to fire over the heads of any alien minatures to accurately hit any Space Marines in the line of sight
5. EQUIP EXPLOSIVE CHARGE - The Chaos Commander detonates an explosive device within his chest piece and is immediately incinerated. All adjacent squares are attacked with the total of 2 heavy weapons dice (similar to suicide android card - Note: Venom of Chaos does not apply when using this card as the Commander is killed).
6 - EQUIP FAVOUR OF THE GODS - Earning the Favour of the Chaos Gods allows the Chaos Commander to re-roll one die when firing or in hand-to-hand combat to try to improve his score.
7 - EQUIP VENOM OF CHAOS - Any Marine (not a Commander) killed by the Chaos Commander in hand-to-hand combat is reborn as a Chaos Marine under the control of the Chaos player
8 - EQUIP RADIO JAMMER - Play this card at the end of your turn. No Marine player may play an Order card on their next turn.

I think these cards allow the alien player and the chaos player to really work effectively as a team to try and give the marine players a hard time. This should in turn encourage the marine players to work very closely if they are to survive.

In the 6 or so missions we have played so far, we haven't yet played a game where the alien player has killed everyone and we have only been playing with 2 marine teams. So the addition of a third marine team seems a bit of overkill to me, but hopefully if we get 5 players this will even the score a bit!

Feel free to use these ideas in your games and let me know how they go, if we get 5 people this week I'll post up a review of how it went and any problems we encountered.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Excellent stuff!

I've played Space Crusade before using the Chaos Spacemarines as an extra team of Space Marines, it was rather a spur-of-the-moment thing so we didn't have any special cards made at the time. The Chaos Spacemarine player was limited to the choice of Missile Launcher and Heavy Bolter for heavy weapons and the Chaos Commander was armed with Power Glove and Power Sword (We swapped out the SC Chaos Commander miniature with a Chaos Spacemarine Champion we had to hand at the time). For Order and Equipment Cards the Chaos Spacemarine player got to pick from the 'spare' cards not used by the other Space Marine players. If we do it again though, I will see about Photoshop-ing together your Chaos Order and Equipment cards.

One thing we came across during our game that you might want to consider is removing (or ignoring) the Lure of Chaos card from the Event Deck as it would unbalance the game in favour of the Chaos player.
On a similar note, although it make sense background wise, I'm not so keen on the idea of the Chaos Player being allied with the GM/“Alien Player” as this would make the Chaos Player less likely to want to attack the monsters and vice-versa.
I'd recommend allowing the Chaos player to collect points and earn ranks in the same way as normal Marine players and although they are not on the same side give them the same mission objectives (A squad of Chaos Marines might be carrying out the same mission as Imperial Spacemarines to stop them getting hold of whatever they are after – I'm sure you could come up with plenty of other explanations, depending on the mission)
From what you've written I'm guessing you intend players to take it turns each game to be the Chaos Marines, but I see no reason not to just have them as an extra option for what kind of Marines players can use.
Also I like the idea of Chaos Marines starting on board the Space-Hulk but this wouldn't work so well if they are being used as an 'extra' Marine team (especially if they are going to explode at the end of the game!), so you'd need to an extra Docking Claw – it might be fun to Photoshop up a corrupted Chaos Docking Claw!

If your looking to get even more players round the table or just want to give your players a few more options of what they'd like to play I'd recommend the following...

The official expansion Eldar Attack gave players the option of playing as a team of the enigmatic Eldar - The expansion may prove difficult to get hold of but I do have a PDF of it I could upload to the forum, then all you'd need to get hold of some Eldar miniatures if you and your friends don't already have some. (I also have a PDF of Mission Dreadnought too)

WD134 (The HeroQuest and Space Crusade special) contains shit loads of extras for Space Crusade.
For those who have access to the miniatures from SpaceHulk, Rules are provided for Marine players to use a Squad of Terminators in Space Crusade and the GM gets rules using Genestealer Hybrids.
If you have the miniatures from Advanced Space Crusade (or the Tyranid Attack game) rules are provided for a Marine player to use a squad of Spacemarine Scouts and the GM to use the large Tyranid Warriors miniatures in the place of Androids.
Of course the modern equivalents of  Terminators, Scouts and Tyranid Warriors are still available from GW today (but watch out for the larger base size of the new Terminators). But Genestealer Hybrids however aren't being made any more and are very sought after so they might prove difficult to get hold of. However you could always convert your own Hybrids, I recommend the current plastic Warhammer Ghouls as a good starting place.

Finally WD134 also included rules for using a team of Ork Looters as a playable force, again extra Ork miniatures should prove easy to get hold of.

Although currently I don't have a PDF of the materials from WD134, if your interested and can't get hold of a copy of the real thing I can put one together but it may take some time
 
Also a great, very affordable and still available alternative to the Space Crusade Spacemarines are these Space Ranger miniatures available from EM4 Miniatures

They are a little taller than the original Space Crusade (and even current 40k) Spacemarines, but like the original Space Crusade ones they have interchangeable weapons. The weapons can be used as the equivalents of  Bolters, Conversion Beamers, Las-Cannons and Heavy Bolters and the Captain would count as being armed with Bolt Pistol and PowerAxe (you could also convert other weapons easily).
At £2.50 for a Squad of 5 I'd recommend them to anyone who wants Space Marines on a budget!

I look forward to hearing how you games go and discussing further rules ideas in the near future

[Mezillious]

The main reason I chose to align the Chaos Marines with the Alien Player is that in the past 3 or 4 games with only 2 marine teams, we have had little trouble in wiping out most or all of the alien's blips and re-inforcements. It seems that with the addition of a 3rd marine team as well as a 4th team bent on the same goal, the aliens would no longer be a threat. I guess you could add scores for other marine teams, effectively making it every-man-for-himself which would change the game, but we have been playing co-operativley so far. If we get 5 tomorrow night we'll run with these rules and i'll let you know how it went.

Also if the chaos marines are taken out of the alien player's arsenal, it leaves the alien player with two (or four with re-inforcements) less heavy weapons which seriously impacts on the effectiveness of the alien player. At least if they are working towards the same goal the combination of alien player and chaos player present a very credible threat to teh marine players.

I'm looking for a game which will leave each marine team with maybe one or two marines if they're lucky, it's not going to be a walk in the park!

[Mezillious]

Oh yeah, totally interested in PDFs if mission dreadnought and elder if you have them, that would be awesome!